A little corner to place my words, I hope some enjoy them

Desert dessert

An odd meal at an empty diner, thousands of miles and many years from it’s original home.
On a motorway in England, an American fifties diner resides. We enter at lunch time to a vacuous space. We are seated to peruse the menu. I order a hot dog with onions, no mustard, I don’t like mustard, also a butterscotch milkshake. My partner orders a chicken burger, holding the bun, and a coffee. In a short while the drinks arrive, then my partner’s bare chicken burger. Shortly after a hot dog arrives, covered in mustard, with no onions. I am not one to complain, but have to say “I ordered the one with onions”. The waiter replies “Oh sorry”, and takes it back, in a while he returns and asks “We can change your order in five minutes, or you can have free onion rings”….. “I’ll change my order please” I reply, I did not avoid onion rings because I couldn’t afford them. My partner slows to allow the delicate preparation required to present a hotdog. In a while the hotdog arrives, covered in a sarcastic amount of onions in no condition to pick up and eat, the bread is pretty stale, but I’m hungry, so I eat a hot dog with a knife and fork for the first time in my life. We are resilient, so wait to be asked if we would like desert, ironically the staff dessert us, they are nowhere to be seen. Eventually they return to give us the menus and we pick our deserts. I choose blueberry cheesecake and a coffee, my partner orders apple pie and ice cream with a coffee top up. A different waiter arrives, he ceremoniously places two long spoons on the table, adding to the already odd experience. The apple pie arrives lonely on the plate, no ice cream in sight, “It does not come with ice cream” says the waiter, contrary to the menu. It is a large slice so this is let off, though now we find the pie is not heated throughout, as the microwave has not nuked it thoroughly. The cheesecake has a side of a small pot of blueberries, rather than including them in the cheesecake. It only takes a few little odd things to throw you. While paying, the waiter engages us in small talk of motorway crashes, just to complete the weird experience. I wonder why this place is deserted?

All outside my head seems like an alien place to me right now, the connections so rarely occurring. Other’s ways I cannot identify with. The group of track suited men loudly self promoting, are not of this earth to me. They don’t have my ways, not my clothes, not my view. I feel the passing cat is more identifiable to me, more like me, than those men. I find myself repelled by their ugly ostentatiousness, their confident idiocy, their crass manner. Take them away from this otherwise peaceful place.

I told them he was an asshole.
They said, “Yeah, but he’s a rich asshole”.
And right there the gulf between us was revealed.
The ones who respect the earned and received money,
and the ones who find cash completely irrelevant.
Respecting cash above the soul,
the foolish mind warped.
What are we to do with them?

Cycling in the flat Holland countryside, verses the hilly Dorset countryside. The level ground means you never have the hard slog of peddling up hill. But you never have the fun of whizzing down one either. Even Keel, verses manic depression